“HA!!” she screamed. “HA! Now you know what it's like, I hope you never come back here ever again,” 1993. A young, heavily pregnant girl stumbles into the emergency room. You don't know this but she is your mother. Brown hair sweeps past onto her face and she stops to brush it off. At 15 she is still incredibly young and she is helped onto a bed by a nurse. By this point you are kicking hard and she can barely hide the pain across her face. The nurse with her is called Madison but is referred to as Madie. “He is hot!!!” she exclaimed. You sigh calming, the sun is shining and it is a hot day. You are tired from yesterday. You went to a party and spent the entire time trying not to get drunk, she on the other hand didn't even bother. “Helloo? Are you even listening?” Complains your mate, you are surprised she doesn't have a hangover. “Yeah course I am!” You reply, deeply offended. You resume your thoughts and leave your mate in her chatter. “Aaaghhhh,” she's still lying there. It's been 4 hours now. The nurses are beginning to get worried but she is asleep now. She doesn't snore. Moans in pain sometimes but never snores. You were born a few hours ago and are now in the nursery with the other newborns. She has not named you yet. Your mother, is only 29 by the time you are 15. She married after 13 years and you all moved to London to live with your new father. You do not hate him although you do wish he'd have moved instead of you. You made new friends and new enemies. Your best friend is called Jan and has a long string of boyfriends. Called a slut by others you tell them this is not true though you secretly don't believe it. You don't have a boyfriend and aren't planning for one. As you watched your mother and Jan deal with the jerks they call 'true love' you decided maybe dating wasn't the best idea. Your mother is now awake and is feeding you through the breast. It's a shame, although she will not disappear, you will spend your life wondering about your true father. There's no glamorous truth to it. They were young and you were too much, too soon. She tells you this often but you find it hard to believe. How could anyone leave a young child? Your own child. Blood is stronger than water, that's what they all used to say. Back before it was acceptable to have divorces and sex without marriage. “HA!!” she screamed. “HA! Now you know what it's like, I hope you never come back here ever again,” That's what she said to you. That's what they all thought but only she had the guts to say it to you. You respected her for it but you still hated her. A women walking down the street is massively overweight and a boy looking at her exclaims “Whoa!! Lady, you wanna lose a few tonnes!” this may be true, it may be what everyone was thinking but the woman has the right to hate the boy for saying this. That is what you think and to an extent so does your mother. She cares about you but you are at that age now and so you have grown apart. Why am I telling you all this? You don't know and you never will. You will never meet me as you will never meet your true father. Your step dad cares for you but he really wants his own family not another blokes discarded ones. You heard him say this, that was the worst day of your life. Of course there will be others. Your life is not over. Far from it. The truth is that your father died when you were 12. Your mother doesn't know this just as he never knew of your existence. Your mother passed along a message but he never received it. Maybe they thought they were helping him. We don't know. We never will but this doesn't effect you so much, in fact sometimes your mother ponders if you ever cared at all. If it was all an act, it wouldn't be so surprising as you were always the drama queen and not half bad at crying anyways. This is not finished. Feedback appreciated
I find this story very confusing and don't really know what you are trying to achieve by it, for example, if you are saying here that the mothers giving birth to a baby, how can that baby, have gone to a party the night before? it seems to be a letter a mother is writing to a son she has had adopted, but I'm not really sure if this is true and the whole piece just leaves me very muddled, if your idea is to constently skip from one time period to another I think it needs to be done in a way that is clearer, maybe you can say what your aims are with this piece?
it's a fascinating story, well worth some polishing. there's a few switchbacks that muddle the issue, but the teenage mother/child relationship is something very powerful in the theme. how it relates to the main character's attraction to and ultimately revulsion of the best friend, her behavior, the main character's attitude towards sex and love, and where that comes from in terms of the main character's relations with the mother. it needs a bit more exploration of the moods, resentments, love, fears, hurts, petty insults and the main character's reactions to those topics. i think this is something that needs expansion for those who don't know anyone who's the child of a teenage mother, or who isn't themself a child of a teenaged mother, but it's definitely a story worth telling.
My comments are similar. You have several flashbacks from prenatal consciousness or birth, thrown in more or less between what appears to be a teenage girl's narrative. Teenage girls are hard enough to understand, without the flashbacks. So you should find a way to inform your reader what you're doing in the story. You might put in date headings, like: June 5, 1993 1993. A young, heavily pregnant girl stumbles into the emergency room. You don't know this but she is your mother. Brown hair sweeps past onto her face and she stops to brush it off. At 15 she is still incredibly young and she is helped onto a bed by a nurse. By this point you are kicking hard and she can barely hide the pain across her face. The nurse with her is called Madison but is referred to as Madie. September 12, 2006 “He is hot!!!” she exclaimed. You sigh calming, the sun is shining and it is a hot day. You are tired from yesterday. You went to a party and spent the entire time trying not to get drunk, she on the other hand didn't even bother. “Helloo? Are you even listening?” Complains your mate, you are surprised she doesn't have a hangover. “Yeah course I am!” You reply, deeply offended. You resume your thoughts and leave your mate in her chatter. ***** There are no doubt other ways to keep the reader informed, so think about it, find a good way to do this. Also, as a reader I'm wondering how and why the two experiences (birth experience and teenage girl experience) are linked in this act of storytelling.
yo I like it. I think the criticisms above come from misreading who/where the narrative is coming from. We are so used to reading stories written from different perspectives that when a story comes along written in the second person it's pretty weird to get a handle on. I didn't find it hard to read or understand, I like the constant flash backs, it's almost like... reverse stream of consciousness(??). I imagine a metaphysical situation where you were just created in the middle of a situation, and all your memories are being GIVEN to you, your life being laid out to a certain point, your thoughts and friends being predicted. Whether or not that was the intention I don't know, but that's how I read it and it makes the story more interesting. That said if this piece was longer than a short story it might get more convoluted and difficult. I know you said it's unfinished but unless you want to start really getting into the criticisms above I wouldn't add too much more. EDIT: After re-reading it I can suggest one improvement to help. THis paragraph: "You made new friends and new enemies. Your best friend is called Jan and has a long string of boyfriends. Called a slut by others you tell them this is not true though you secretly don't believe it. You don't have a boyfriend and aren't planning for one. As you watched your mother and Jan deal with the jerks they call 'true love' you decided maybe dating wasn't the best idea. " The rest of the work is laid out, each paragraph alternates between current time and flashback current and flashback. This is the one that doesn't fit in current time. All current time references are predominantly made up of interchange between Jan and "You". Perhaps rewording this to include some dialog would clear the distinction. This paragraph was written in the flashback style.
trim down the number of adverbs and prepositional phrases. they tend to be distracting, so only use them when it's neccessary. good work.
